They sell out whatever, so why care? Certainly why plough money (& it would be a *lot* of money) into a system that only operates for 2-3 hours every year?

Because a) then it would be guaranteed to work for all the other things seetickets do (and there are other Really Big Instant Sellout gigs, not the same scale, but, y'know) and b) they could then sell their Amazing Totally Un-DDOS-able System to other people and Make $$$$ Fast. Maybe.

Also, c) because otherwise they look monumentally shit once a year, and then for the rest of the year, for the events where they don't have a monopoly on the ticket sales, people are less likely to use them. Again, 'maybe'.

I dunno, I just feel it could be their flagship thing rather than their guaranteed-fuckup thing.

Owen points out that if the tickets were split into different allocations for different resellers eg a quarter to seetickets, a quarter to wegottickets, etc, then a) each of them would only be dealing with a quarter of the problem, and b) there'd be some incentive for them to do it better because of competition.

And, I mean, are we assuming here that Glasto Inc. went out to tender for the ticket-selling contract and seetickets were the best of the bunch? Or are they just Michael Eavis's mates?

But doesn't the same arg apply to Madonna or whatever? (I have 0 idea how the problems compare, mind.) They sell out anyway, so it doesn't matter.

They seem *not* to care about looking like idiots once a year, so I can only assume that it doesn't impact on their business. I agree that it could be flagship rather than fuckup, but from a business POV, that's only worth it if the benefits outweigh the costs. Given that the ticket-selling business seems to be neatly sewn up between about 3 large companies now, the margin of available-business may be quite small.

Sorry, I have my "cynical" hat firmly on. From a more generous POV, I suspect that Glastonbury is actually the biggest deal available by quite a long way in the ticket-selling stakes. So basically they only have a really decent test once a year. They have changed things every year to try and avoid the previous year's cockup; thereby introducing another cockup. I really don't know how difficult or expensive it is to do proper full-on testing: several hundred thousand people all with >1 window open hitting refresh every couple of seconds. You can't do it properly internally because some of the issue is to do with the pipes to the outside world.

Whenever he appears in the press, Eavis disgusts me, the upsidedownheaded parsimonious fucking farmer that he is. He treats his paying customers like cattle, presumably that being the only mode of interaction that he's happy with. The poor buggers paid through the nose for the privilege to be used last year (or was it the one before?) to test his ace new drainage systems, presumably because it would cost too much to test them properly before the actual event. It still cocking flooded.

This year the organizers were whining that they hadn't had enough interest to ensure a sell-out, prior to their systems going live and promptly falling over. Maybe for one year they might not see the unholy, undignified, mean-spirited scrum that they get every year, and they start complaining. It's pathetic.

Glastonbury seems to be run entirely by greedy, ignorant money-oriented fools who won't spend a pound to gain a hundred. I'd argue that the best thing to do, if you genuinely love the festival's long-term vibe, is to simply not go, until everyone currently involved is bankrupt. Financially, obv.

I don't think boycotting Glastonbury will have any effect on the long-term vibe of the festival.

If everybody who gave a toss stopped going, then it would wind up full of people who didn't give a toss and enjoyed shouting "BOLLOCKS!" at top of voices all night long in the camping areas. They could rename it the Pilton Mean Fiddler Festival and be done with it. Anyone who gave a toss about the vibe, meanwhile, would just go to other festivals; to the extent to which the long-term vibe survived, it wouldn't be in Glastonbury.

(I was impressed that the organisers of this year's Glade festival said they were deliberately reducing the number of tickets, since they thought last year's was a smidge too big.)

I'm quite happy to give it at least one last try this year. The Green Fields are still there, and there's a tiny chance it might not even rain as much as the last two years!